All that we know of the growth
of tribes, races, nations, leads us to believe that they grew in this
way. Natural kindred was the groundwork, the leading and determining
idea; but, by one of those legal fictions which have had such an
influence on all institutions, adoption was in certain cases allowed to
count as natural kindred.[3]
The usage of all languages shows that community of blood was the leading
idea in forming the greater and smaller groups of mankind. Words like
[Greek: phylon, genos], _gens_, _natio_, _kin_, all point to the natural
family as the origin of all society. The family in the narrower sense,
the children of one father in one house, grew into a more extended
family, the _gens_. Such were the Alkmaionidai, the Julii, or the
Scyldingas, the real or artificial descendants of a real or supposed
forefather. The nature of the _gens_ has been set forth often enough. If
it is a mistake to fancy that every Julius or Cornelius was the natural
kinsman of every other Julius or Cornelius, it is equally a mistake to
think that the _gens Julia_ or _Cornelia_ was in its origin a mere
artificial association, into which the idea of natural kindred did not
enter.
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